Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 2: From the eighteenth century to its demolitionGriffiths, Arthur
History
Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 2: From the eighteenth century to its demolition
Griffiths, Arthur
Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England); Prisons -- England; Punishment -- Great Britain
The discontinuance of the long-practised procession to Tyburn, and the
reasons for this change have already been fully set forth. The terrible
spectacle was as demoralizing to the public, for whose admonition
it was intended, as the exposure was brutal and cruel towards the
principal actors. The decision to remove the scene of action to the
immediate front of Newgate was in the right direction, as making the
performance shorter and diminishing the area of display. But the Old
Bailey was not exclusively used; at first, and for some few years after
1784, executions took place occasionally at a distance from Newgate.
This was partly due to the survival of the old notion that the scene
of the crime ought also to witness the retribution; partly because
residents in and about the Old Bailey raised a loud protest against the
constant erection of the scaffold in their neighbourhood. As regards
the first, I find that in 1786 John Hogan, the murderer of a Mr. Odell,
an attorney who resided in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, was
executed on a gibbet in front of his victim's house. Lawrence Jones, a
burglar, was in 1793 ordered for execution in Hatton Garden, near the
house he had robbed; and when he evaded the sentence by suicide, his
body was exhibited in the same neighbourhood, extended upon a plank on
the top of an open cart, in his clothes, and fettered. From 1809 to
1812, Execution Dock, on the banks of the Thames, was still retained.
Here John Sutherland, commander of the British armed transport "The
Friends," suffered on the 29th June, 1809, for the murder of his
cabin-boy, whom he stabbed after much ill-usage on board the ship as
it lay in the Tagus. On the 18th December, 1812, two sailors, Charles
Palm and Sam Tilling, were hanged at the same place for the murder of
their captain, James Keith, of the trading vessel "Adventure," upon
the high seas. They were taken in a cart to the place of execution,
amidst a vast concourse of people. "Palm, as soon as he was seated in
the cart, put a quid of tobacco into his mouth, and offered another to
his companion, who refused it with indignation. . . . Some indications
of pity were offered for the fate of Tilling; for Palm, execration
alone."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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